Battle Fantasia: 2D Fighter With Modern Beauty

After nearly passing out from the 2D glory of the Princess Crown follow-up, Odin Sphere, you can imagine my excitement when I stumbled across the new 2.5D fighter from Arc System Works known as Battle Fantasia.

2.5D fighters (2D gameplay while using 3D models) are nothing new, but Arc’s new creation is the first (that I’m aware of) that could actually pass for high-resolution 2D sprites. The style seems like an excellent progression from their previous works like the Guilty Gear X series and Hokuto no Ken.

The game is still early in the test phase, and from the looks of the test videos I have seen, the gameplay doesn’t look terribly exciting. (Although, maybe that is just because nobody knows how to play it well yet).

According to Wikipedia, “The game runs on Taito’s new Type X2 hardware and is the first game to use Taito’s new Vewlix arcade cabinet, which allows the game to run in resolutions as high as 720p” This system runs on a slimmed down version of Windows XP. (Which may explain this crash screen). Between the Windows underpinings and the high-definition capabilities, it would not be highly unlikely to see the XBox 360 as a prime candidate for a console port if the time comes.

As with most of the cutting-edge arcade games, Insomnia.ac has posted the impressions of the game. The crowd was very impressed with the high-definitional capabilities, but the author was rather turned off by the RPG-like elements. However, I thought it was interesting to hear him say it was hard to go back to other 2D fighters after playing Battle Fantasia.

I look forward to seeing how this beauty turns out. It would be a shame for such a stunning display of 2D gameplay be hampered by mediocre fighting action.